In a Nutshell

The fish called “Manta ray” has recently been suggested as an explanation for sightings of apparent living pterosaurs. Sometimes a big Manta ray will jump out of the water, perhaps even reaching ten feet above the surface. But that misidentification hypothesis falls flat when serious problems come to the surface.

The American cryptozoologists Garth Guessman, Jonathan Whitcomb, and David Woetzel explored Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, in 2004, interviewing many eyewitnesses of the flying creature the natives call “ropen.” The great majority of sightings were not over the sea but over land. That eliminates Manta rays jumping out of the water. One critical sighting, around 1994, was at Lake Pung, which is surrounded by mountain peaks in the middle of the island, far from the coast. The giant ropen was flying over the surface of the lake, but that lake has no access to the sea or any other large body of water. It’s an isolated crater lake.

Some natives of Umboi Island told two of the American explorers that the empty shells of giant clams, found far inland, up above the sea, were carried there by the ropen. No Manta ray fish could do such a thing.

Another sighting involved two pilots of a small plane flying away from the northwest coast of Australia. They nearly collided with a huge flying creature that the pilot first thought was an oncoming plane. The pilot realized it was no plane when it flapped its wings. That sighting was thousands of feet above the sea, eliminating a Manta ray fish interpretation.

Do Jumping Fish Look Like Flying Pterosaurs

What about the 1965 sighting by Patty Carson? This was close to the sea, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But the “dinosaur” that Patty and her brother watched on one particular day was sitting upright in tall grass before it flapped its wings and flew away.

Manta Rays or Modern Pterosaurs

The critical point is that the man who witnessed the sighting of two apparent pterosaurs was in a CITY, not in a boat. And he saw two of the creatures flying together. That eliminates that sighting regarding Manta rays that leap out of the sea.

Protecting the environment should include protecting humans from giant flying predators, at least in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. The American nonfiction author Jonathan Whitcomb has just written a new cryptozoology book: Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea, and some of the flying creatures are large enough to carry away a human.

One of the huge “ropens,” or giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs, almost collided with a plane piloted by two professional pilots, according to the book:

The two men were flying a Britten-Norman Islander, past the halfway point from Broome, Australia, to Bali, Indonesia, at 6500 feet, when they nearly collided with a large flying creature . . . “At that moment, its wings took one enormous, slow, articulated flap. This was no aircraft! I banked left and it went down our starboard side in the opposite direction . . . [My co-pilot] looked again at the chart, searching for any island off the Indonesian coast – which, he joked, must be called Jurassic Park!!

Both pilots later communicated with Whitcomb, describing to the American what they had encountered on that flight. They did not insist that they had seen a “pterodactyl,” but were puzzled as to what the flying creature could have been.

New Cryptozoology Book in Kindle Format

Many cryptozoology ebooks are about cryptids in general, others about a particular cryptid in a particular U. S. state, others about Bigfoot. My new book may be the only one about sightings of live pterosaurs in the southwest Pacific.

Pterosaur in Australia

Flying cryptids like giant pterosaurs have been spotted in various parts of Australia, including coastal areas and the outback. A common feature described by eyewitnesses is a long tail and an apparent absence of feathers.

Press Release on Strange Flying Creatures in Australia

Hayward had been a real estate agent for 15 years, before working in the Commonwealth Public Service for 18 years prior to his retirement. He told the American author about what he had seen while working in government service:

It was something flying that appeared to be at the height of light planes that fly around here, as Moorabbin Airport is not far away. This thing was at least as large as a light plane, say a Cesna.

Over the past ten years, eyewitnesses have reported living pterosaurs (AKA pterodactyls) flying over eastern Los Angeles County, sometimes around Whittier. Two of those sightings were within about eighteen months of each other: early 2005 (Santa Fe Springs) involved a huge flying creature the approximate size of a Cesna airplane; 2006 (also Santa Fe Springs) sighting of a long-tailed “pterodactyl” that may have had a wingspan of 6-12 feet.

One little known account involves a thirsty pterosaur:

La Habra, California

a large flying creature that stopped for a drink at a friend of the families home in the hills of La Habra Ca.  She said she could of sworn a helicopter had set down in her back yard, but as she peered out the back window, she saw a big winged “thing” drinking out of her pool.  By the time she was able to get her camera it had flown off.

Santa Fe Springs Sightings

He saw the long-tailed “pterodactyl” flying in an irregular way, unlike any bird flight that the eyewitness had seen. At the end of the tail was a furry or hairy ball or similar structure

Who can be a Pterodactyl Expert?

But communicating with eyewitnesses—that in itself has helped me to learn how to get to the relevant truth about apparent pterosaurs that are observed by people around the world.

A man saw what appeared to be a pterosaur, on July 17, 2012, flying in Oklahoma. In his own words:

I’m a truck driver and I was headed eastbound on I-40 about 30 to 40 miles west of Oklahoma city around 2:30p.m. I was the phone with my wife when I saw something I had never seen before flying southward in front of me from what I have read and the pictures I have seen on some site the description seems to fit

What did not fit was the size, which was similar to the size of a crow. Also the flying creature did not seem to have a long neck. It did, however, have a structure on the end of the long tail, and the creature had no feathers, according to the truck driver.

He was not the only person to have seen a pterosaur, or a “pterodactyl,” in Oklahoma. From the third edition of the book Live Pterosaurs in America:

In Woodward, Oklahoma, near a small river, at about noon, a fourteen-year-old became terrified at the sight of a pterosaur-like creature.

“I was walking to the small river where I usually caught carp fish. . . . a large animal took off into the air. At first I thought it was an eagle. Then I noticed it was a dinosaur. I went to my knees so that it would not see me. I was afraid it would eat me.”

Another Oklahoma pterosaur sighting

The truck driver also noticed something at the end of the tail, what he called a “blunt end.” He could not make out any detail, but acknowledged that it could have been what other eyewitnesses describe. In other words, he was sure that there was some kind of structure at the end of the tail.

According to two eyewitesses of what seem to be long-tailed pterosaurs, the tail-vane orientation appears to be horizontal rather than vertical. The sightings were around 1965 in Cuba and in June of 2012 in Southern California. In each case, an eyewitness had a close view of the end of the tail. In each case, a flying creature was seen to have no feathers. Both eyewitnesses reported their sightings to the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb.

Paleontologists generally do not take pterosaur sightings seriously, for they specialize in fossils, not cryptozoology. Most of them, at least in recent years, have taken the view that the tail vane of basal pterosaurs was vertical. For those who believe in eyewitness testimony, that vertical idea, with the tail-end of pterosaurs, now seems to have been shot down.

Tale of the Pterosaur Tail

Contrary to what some paleontologists believe, the orientation of the tail vane, in the “basal” pterosaurs, now appears to be horizontal . . .  a structure that could have been seen well from above or below the creature but not nearly as well from the side.